Ana Mendieta: Performance in the way of the primitive

Abstract

“The interpretations of Ana Mendieta´s works usually provide a typical reading related to her biography and her bibliographic legacy. She appears as a ritual and performance artist alongside other artists such as the Vienna Actionists, and her work has been often justified through to Sigmund Freud’s psychology or Erwin Goffman’s sociology. However, focusing on the special perception of her real and magic art, from 1972, we introduce Mendieta within a Primitivistc- movement from the second half of the twentieth century as an art form that functions of in the way of the primitive. Therefore, a redefinition of Mendieta’s performance is required: in this paper, we suggest a convergence between anthropology, theatre and performance, starting with the analysis on the duality in social drama defended by Victor Turner. Therefore, the performance of Ana Mendieta would present two processes or states that are distinguished from the signifier.